Pavlos Kotsidis the man behind the foreign labels in Greece

Pavlos Kotsidis, the man behind the labels that are available in Greece

Those who know Pavlos Kotsidis speak highly of his knowledge and experience in the brewing industry. He is a man that doesn’t like media, photos nor publicity. He would rather let his work speak for him instead of the other way around. Pavlos Kotsidis is currently the General Manager of VOLKAN, a position he has held since 2012. However, his career didn’t start in 2012, it begun many years ago. At that time, beer was limited to a few labels from two or three companies and microbrewery as a concept was completely unknown to the Greek consumer.

1980 and Pavlos Kotsidis leaves for Germany in order to examine the possibility of studying at “Brauhaus” school of industrial design in Munich. His curiosity leads him to the pursuit of beers in a region where beer is practically a way of life. His trek continued in Munich and Dusseldorf, where his studies lost to the brewery tanks which he visited daily to observe the production of Alt beer, which was the brewery’s specialty. Subsequently, Dusseldorf became his base and he went on to travel across Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern France and many other areas that had breweries which he visited to enrich his knowledge regarding the various brewing methods.

His return to Greece was a break from beer since his military obligations had to be fulfilled. Barely discharged Pavlos began working as a freelance collaborator for Athenian Brewery(late 1984-early 1985).

After another break from the beer industry in 1988 he joined “SYMBOL LTD” and along with his associates he started importing the first specialty beers in Greece. These new, unfamiliar and often expensive beer products imported from France, Belgium, Germany and Italy were met with skepticism by the Greek market.

In 1995 he “transferred” to “OK ATHENS” where he launched initiated the development of its own portfolio in the Greek market and enriched it with special beers from the UK and the U.S. In 1998 he transferred once again, this time to “ZYTHON & ZYTHON” which is responsible for exclusively marketing products in collaboration with “DEALS S.A” which were previously managed by SYMBOL LTD which had gone out of business. Three years later, in 2001, finds him working at DEALS S.A which by then had taken over ZYTHON & ZYTHON. His first move was to introduce new special beers from all over Europe concentrating mainly on beers from Belgium and monasteries. His next move was to import beer from small U.S. breweries. A trend that at the time was just beginning. Another one of his undertakings was the introduction of quality labels from Germany, a country with a great presence in the Greek market.

From the middle of 2012 and until today he has been working at VOLKAN beer, a rapidly growing microbrewery beer. His love of imported beers led to his collaboration with the famous, in the field of wine company, “TRINITY Ltd” which created the I-PIGS beers from European microbreweries, whose countries were facing economic crisis.

Pavlos Kotsidis is one of the few people recognized by breweries in many countries. He is one of those people who can be counted on the fingers of one hand for their contribution to the brewing industry, even if he has focused mostly on its commercial side and that is something which we owe to him to acknowledge. Excluding the time, he was taking his first steps in the industry working as freelance collaborator for the Athenian Brewery, all other companies trusted his judgment regarding he proposals about the import of particular beer labels. His longstanding selections have vindicated him, as well as those, who trusted his knowledge. Pavlos spends his free time with his family or enjoying his favorite team. Although he would not refuse a new travel adventure overflowing with malts and hops. It all depends on what is trending at the time!